Imagination Precedes Speaking

For the last few years, three questions have, in one way or another, driven a disproportionate number of the web-related presentations I've either attended or seen online: Should web designers know how to code? How do I convince my boss that we should be building our [thing] responsively? How do we get clients to pay for [new thing du jour]? On the surface, these are good and relevant questions. Ours is an industry in upheaval, and we're all trying to figure out how to cope with revolutionary change and its implications. But a deeper examination of questions like these reveals a dangerous and shared achilles heel: In the name of community, we have built around us a professional echo chamber so tight, it's weakened our ability to do the very synthesis required to advance the causes that drove such questions in the first place. For forty minutes, we'll focus on practical ways to wrestle ourselves and our profession from this straightjacket of regurgitative nonthinking, and stop creating needless Sisyphean drama where progress, play, and growth ought naturally to dwell instead.

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